Comic-Con 2010: Cast And Crew Talk Tron Legacy
Everyone wants to know more and more about Tron Legacy. For those of you not at Comic-Con, we have transcribed the entire Tron Legacy panel which took place on Thursday. Here is the panel's official description:
Returning for an unprecedented third year to the fans and convention that started it all, Walt Disney Pictures is pleased to present a special insider look at the upcoming TRON: Legacy. Panelists include filmmakers and talent from the film: director Joe Kosinski, producers Sean Bailey and Steven Lisberger, and cast members Jeff Bridges, Garrett Hedlund, Olivia Wilde, Michael Sheen, and Bruce Boxleitner. The discussion, moderated by Patton Oswalt, is set to include exclusive glimpses of the film, as well as a Q&A involving all panel participants, along with special surprise guests.
Read the full transcription now after the jump.
Patton Oswalt: Hall H, where the first test footage for TRON Legacy was shown and you guys all went crazy. So these guys, of course, have not completed the film finally. So what we're doing is we're going to show you five minutes of TRON Legacy every year for the next 20 years, and you will see the entire movie. It will cost you $10,000 to see the complete film. [laughter] If you happen to be on Twitter and you want to help this thing trend, just add hashtag- comma TRON. Get it? Because they took TRON and put...[laughs] You can also check out the TRON Facebook page. Facebook.com/TRON. And for some reason there is a Friendster page with three people on it and a picture of a hamster. [laughter] There's also an iPhone app. App/Tron for all of your TRON updates during the day, including the secret shirtless Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner knife fight that will be happening this evening. You will be sent the location of that. Also, be sure to drop by the TRON booth, which is in...Hang on, they told me to actually say what the aisle is. But if you've been down on the floor, it's huge. You can't miss it. But, drop by aisle 3712. You can check out the TRON: Evolution videogame, as well as a lot of cool TRON merch. And, this year only, permanent TRON facial tattoos, which is a great way to show your loyalty for this film. And of course, you can always go to Disney.com/TRON for all kinds of updates and coolness. So how many people here actually remember seeing the very first TRON?
[applause]
How many people actually remember seeing it in the theater? Just raise your walkers! There you go, yes. [in old person voice] Back before there were digital phones, you punks!
[laughter]
Well, in those 27 years, the film TRON has pretty much sunk itself pretty deeply into our culture. Way more deeply than I realized. So right now we are going to run a little min-documentary to kind of show you the cultural impact of TRON. So I get to say my three favorite words: Roll the package.
That was TRON! I didn't know...Did they really do TRON on ice? They did an ice show with TRON?
[laughter]
Oh, why didn't they do that with Bladerunner? Seriously, how could they not slap some skates on Rutger Hauer?
[laughter]
All right. We have got so much cool stuff to show you. They showed it to me last week, and I am not hyping it. It is ridiculously cool. But we don't have a lot of time, so let's just get started and bring out this group of people. We have enough talent to fill 10 dioceses? I'm not really sure how to pronounce that word. But ladies and gentlemen, let's welcome the director of TRON: Legacy, Joe Kosinski.
[applause]
Ah, look at him. Lanky and lean, every nerd girls dream. Yes! And how about producer Sean Bailey!
[applause]
Ooh, looking ravenously, devishly casual in an open shirt! Oh, and the original creator of TRON! This is the guy, Steven Lisberger ladies and gentlemen!
[applause]
Yes! Oh, the smartest hobbit in the shire.
[laughter]
And now, let's bring out...Come on! He's so adorable! And now, let's bring out the stars of the film, Garrett Hedlund...
[applause]
And the ladies go craazzy! Olivia Wilde!
[applause]
Oh, so many happy nerd boys out there right now. Michael Sheen! Making his first Comic-Con appearance ladies and gentlemen!
[applause]
TRON himself, Bruce Boxleitner!
[applause]
And a man who really ties the film together, Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges!
[applause]
All right, so...Yeah, you'll be hearing a lot of random noobs during the day, Jeff. So that's not any kind of flashback. Just take it and roll with it.
OK, so Joe. Let's start with Joe, the director. I mean basically, you are doing the next chapter of TRON. So talk a little bit about how intimidating that must have been, and talk about some of the special effects and stuff that you worked with...go ahead. Talk! Thrill them!
Joe Kosinski: TRON was one of those movies I remember, as a kid, seeing the first time probably on VHS in the mid '80s. And it just looked like nothing else I had ever seen. Technically, it pushed boundaries. And conceptually, I think it was really decades ahead of its time. So it was an honor, but a kind of daunting kind of challenge to do the next chapter of this film.
We had to push the boundaries creatively, technically, and also story-wise, tell a story that couldn't be told until today. And I think we've done that in a couple of ways. We've shot this thing with the Camera Infusion camera system; true 3D movie. No conversion here in this film.
[applause]
Another thing we've done is we've done fully illuminated suits. So in the first movie, they had to basically trace each frame by hand. In this film, we did fully illuminated suits. So you will see when the actors get close to each other, they illuminate each other; they illuminate the environment around them. It was a tremendous challenge, but I think the results will speak for themselves.
And then finally, I think the biggest technical challenge and the thing I am most excited about is Jeff Bridges, having him in the film first of all, but having him play two roles. He plays Kevin Flynn, the programmer from the first film, and he also plays Flynn's avatar Clu in our movie. And Clu has remained the same age he was when he was created. So we will see Jeff at 35 years old playing against himself. And he just does an incredible job.
[applause]
Patton: We're going to see some of that footage later. It's pretty eerie in a good way. And the 3D camera technique, this is the next generation beyond the stuff they used in Avatar, right? This is like the new, improved...Joe Kosinski: Yeah, we used the latest generation Sony F35 camera, all shot on Master Prime lenses. It's a beautiful rendition, and hopefully you will see it soon.Patton: Not like Avatar, that cheap piece of junk. Like this is the good stuff, right?
[applause]
Patton: OK. Now Sean, it was two years ago you guys showed the footage that you shot in a men's room at the Greyhound bus station at Twangier and Yucca. And from that footage, suddenly everyone went crazy. You gotta find writers, find a director. What was it like putting all this together?Sean Bailey: It was a great process, starting with our incredible writers, Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz from Lost.
[applause]
Our wonderful producing colleagues, you know, Justin Springer, Brigham Taylor, Jeff Silver, our leader Steven Lisberger. And then, to me, who I think is a visionary filmmaker in Joe Kosinski. And shortly after that, we also came across Daft Punk to work on the score of the movie, which we're thrilled about.
And then you hit the piece of casting at the process. We felt we had to have Kevin Flynn and we had to have TRON, so we were very fortunate. And starting us off, we had Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner join the cast. We are very much focused on a father son story; a real emotional story at the heart of this movie in addition to all the what I believe are stunning visuals. And so to cast the son of Kevin Flynn, we were very fortunate in finding Garrett Hedlund to play Sam Flynn.
And then our wonderful other cast members: Olivia Wilde, Michael Sheen, and a surprise or two in the movie yet to be revealed. But just an incredibly fortunate process with a great collaborative team.
Patton: Wow. Now, Jeff Bridges. The number of characters you have created in your career, all the acting challenges that you have gone through. Now suddenly, you are in a movie where you are revisiting a character you played 27 years ago? I think that might be the furthest amount of time between originating the character and going back to him. And then you've got to act against yourself, a 35 year old version of yourself. What was all that like, man?Jeff Bridges: It was pretty wild, psychedelic. One of the things that always bothered me as an actor when I had to be in a movie where you had to play yourself at different ages is that there is usually another actor that has to play that part, you know, as the young man. And now, that's no longer the case. You play yourself at any age, whether it's an old man or an infant. And to be this groundbreaking movie where the birth of that idea has really, you know, been born is a wonderful, exciting thing.
It was a lot of fun. I know they are polishing the movie right up till the very end. So I haven't seen the final effect, but I can't wait to see it. You are going to see it...I'm going to see some, too!
Patton: Were you like bummed out seeing the 35 year old version of yourself at craft service? He could like eat cars, and you were like trying to...Jeff: The guy was a real [inaudible]. He was coming on to Olivia all the time. I don't know about that, but he...
[laughter]
Patton: Well, now Garrett, you, of course, played the young Flynn, the son of Flynn. And they were mentioning earlier how they had the light cycle suits actually light up. And so basically, you did a movie where you are in a skintight suit the entire time. They didn't paint that one; that was real, right?Garrett Hedlund: Well, you know at first they glued it on. But I tell you, it's kind of the wardrobe of a lifetime. I mean where do you go from here? Jeans and a t-shirt will just never be the same.Patton: And then the light part was really lit up. You were wearing the suit that had live electricity pretty much going through it.
Garrett: Yeah, I mean the suit was like three quarters of an inch of this sort of foam rubber, and there was a chord sort of splitting the difference all the way. So the more you sort of bend, the more you are going to rip, the more repairs happen, and the more you sort of hold up the process. So stand as straight as you can.
Patton: Exactly. And now Olivia, of course. You kind of representing the other hot girls out there who are feeling very uncomfortable right now. But you play a very ambiguous, mysterious character who is sort of helping Garrett? Talk about Quorra and what you think her agenda is.Olivia Wilde: Quorra is a an amazing character. It was such an honor to play a really powerful, tough, kickass woman in a movie like this. She's mysterious and smart, cool. And she's been a companion of Kevin Flynn's for a long time. And she's a fearless warrior, and I've always wanted to play a warrior. So I finally got to do that, and got to learn how to fight. It was just an incredible honor.Patton: Now, anyone who was here last year, they showed footage of the martial arts stuff. So both of you guys, you and Garrett were doing...What was that like in the...Did you have to keep in mind the special effects they were putting in later, as well as actually doing the martial arts? How much martial arts did you do in the film?Olivia Wilde: We did a lot of martial arts training, and we did as many of our stunts as we could. But we also had an amazing stunts team from 87eleven who made us look pretty badass. But I had to remember...you know, I was training not in four inch heels, and then we started shooting the movie and I was in four inch heels, so I had to learn to do all the kicks and flips and all that in the suit, which was a whole other thing. But I'm glad we did it. It's cool, now I know how to do that.Patton: Garrett, did you train for martial arts in the skintight uniform? Did you have to keep that in mind?Garrett Hedlund: Well, I mean there was a lot of intensive training that went into this. I think I started maybe the first week of January, and we didn't start filming until April 6th or so. My character had to go through hardcore training. You know, leaping over obstacles and that sort of stuff, and motorcycle training, and also intensive physical training with the 87eleven group. And sort of hand to hand combat, and sort of all that. It was a tedious process. But you gotta do this training to be able to comply with this suit. And you gotta have the strength to sort of defy the restrictions that maybe it may offer. But I think we did a pretty good job.Patton: Now, Michael Sheen, you are British. You are adorable. You flew here in a magic teapot. You are sleeping under a magic dandelion leaf somewhere in the city. But you've done other intensive special effects movies where you are in, basically, fake environments having to make it seem very real. Was this more or less intense than the others? And also, you and Olivia sort of share maybe a bit of ambiguity in your characters, that you don't quite know where they stand.Michael Sheen: First of all, beejenkies [sp] there's a lot of you here! Wow! And also, I thought everyone was supposed to dress up as a character when they came, so I came as Jeff Bridges and he shaved his beard off! What's going on!
[laughter]
Yeah, I've got used to living in a sort of slightly false reality, because I live in LA now. So that helped with the film.
[laughter]
And also, I'd like to correct something. It's actually a 4D film because Jeff Bridges brings an extra dimension of awesomeness, so it's the first 4D film. And I believe the 27 year gap between the two films, I think for Michael Douglas between Wall Street 1 and Wall Street 2, there was a 230 year gap.
Patton: Oh, wow! That's interesting! I didn't know that!Michael Sheen: Yeah. But yeah, in terms of playing in sort of the environment, the sort of created fantasy environment, this, without a doubt, beats everything else. In fact, coming down in the car yesterday, I had the schedule for the whole thing here. And just seeing the TRON logo at the top of it made me, "Oh, I'm in TRON! I'm in TRON!" Because when I first saw the film when I was like 11, it was just...it had a massive effect on me. So to end up here with these guys is just amazing.Patton: Wow. Well then with that in mind, let us go, of course, to TRON himself, Mr. Bruce Boxleitner!
[applause]
Patton: I mean 27 years. How did you feel when the phone rings and they are like, "Hey, we're doing TRON Legacy. We need TRON back." Was your suit in the garage? Did you like go get into it?
[laughter]
Like what did you do?
Bruce Boxleitner: Well, I instantly threw my walker into the corner and I felt like the old TRON again. I was absolutely thrilled when I did get that phone call. To revisit a character 27 years later is quite amazing. You don't get to do it very often. And to see where they went with Alan and the rest of the characters.
You know, I've been living in science fiction for a while now, so I know this CGI stuff pretty well, having had a space station for five years on television. So I do know the...looking at a little piece of tape on a green screen, I know exactly what that is. I've fought many space battles on those things.
But this one takes it into a whole new dimension. I think you are all going to be very, very thrilled by it. I am, and I am the biggest TRON fan there is.
Patton: Wow. Now, you and Jeff were talking a little bit backstage about, you actually kind of...You both sort of realized at the same time the technology that existed when you guys first did TRON compared to how it is now, it was ridiculous!Jeff: Well, there was no Internet. Our phones we carried around in big suitcases. A completely different world. But looking back at those days, the same thing attracted me to the original as TRON Legacy, and that is getting a chance to, you know, play around with all of the technology we are heading towards. And of course, the technology that is used in this TRON makes the old one look like, you know, an old black and white TV show. I mean this is pretty spectacular.Bruce Boxleitner: I mean we had spandex tights and a hockey helmet. And we threw Frisbees.Jeff Bridges: Don't forget our dance belts.Bruce: And the immortal dance belt.Jeff: The fans out there are going to want to get them.Bruce: The first male thong.Jeff: I think that they are available, the TRON dance belt.Patton: Available in a booth just outside.Bruce: We have a reproduction for sale outside.Jeff: It's like a thong, but for men.Patton: It has to feel weird knowing that the original TRON standup video game, everyone in this room has in their pocket right now 100 times the computing power of something that you guys used to go, "This is amazing! There's like three games on this one game! What's going to happen next?" And now, everyone can basically outdo that just with one click of the button. That's so odd!Bruce: Well, I feel like we had, in a way, at least movie-wise, the technology, we were there at sort of the groundbreaking of this. Steven Lisberger certainly can attest to that. I feel like sort of a pioneering spirit of it all.Patton: Well now we get to the godfather, the mastermind, the master control unit of TRON, Mr. Steven Lisberger.
[applause]
Patton: I mean this is the master of the grid right there, basically. Did you ever see this day coming? Did you ever envision you would be sitting here?Steven Lisberger: It proves to me that some things, good things, take a really, really long time to happen. And it's like the line from the first film: "You just keep doing what you think is right and you hope it works out in the end." Jeff said that in TRON 1.Patton: Now were there things that you had envisioned for the first TRON that you did not have the technology to do that now they are doing? Were there things that you had that just were beyond the technology?Steven Lisberger: No matter how good the technology is the artists, the creative people find a way to spend 105% of it. So in a strange way, it feels similar to the first film. You get that idea that no matter how good it gets, it's not going to be good enough.Patton: Yeah. Wow. A 27 year gap. We're going to now run a quick in memoriam montage of the original TRON fans who died waiting for this movie...
[laughter]
Patton: Can we not? We don't have that package? OK. Well, Joe, you do have some stuff to show these guys though, right, that we are about to start running? What do you think?Joe Kosinski: Yeah. Well, you know, Comic-Con is so important to this movie. We were here two years ago. We put up a little V effects test we did just to test the waters and see if there was any interest in this movie whatsoever. And due to the response from the fans here and around the world, it's a big reason why this movie is happening today.
So I wanted to make sure we did something special for you guys, something exclusive. Show you something that no one else has seen. So I brought about eight minutes of the movie to show.
[applause]
Patton: Wow. OK. Well, we're going to show a couple of things. Put your 3D glasses on. And please, please take your camera phones out and get ready to film.
[laughter]
There is no better way to honor their hard work than to post a dinky, choppy short version of this on the Internet for free. There is no better way to support...So get ready to film this. I saw this stuff last week. I can't wait to see it right now. Are we going to do it? Let's dim the lights. Glasses on, here we go!
Patton: The 35 year old Jeff Bridges is...that's amazing! Come on, man! Did you guys have to share a trailer?Jeff Bridges: Missed that.Patton: Huh?Jeff Bridges: I missed that.Patton: Oh, that's OK. Are we all a little deaf right now, kind of soaking in this? Oh, God. All right. Sorry, just recovering. I've lost my place in the script. Oh, Joe, now that we've seen...you guys saw the big arena footage for the games with the crowd and everything. All right. Well, we are going to do something pretty unique right now. I am going to let Joe explain this to you. But essentially, all of you are about to be in this movie. And I'm going to let Joe explain this. Go ahead.Joe Kosinski: Yeah, we are going to try something. And this might be crazy, but I thought it was worth giving it a shot. This is the first time this has ever been tried. We actually have technicians from Skywalker Sound all throughout the audience, and we're going to do some crowd recording. If you guys do a great job, you are actually going to be in TRON Legacy in December.
[applause]
Joe Kosinski: So what I need you to do is...I can't speak a lot while we are recording this because every word is being recorded. But I need you to follow the instructions on the screen very closely. It is probably four or five minutes. Just follow it as closely as you can. When it says be silent, be silent. No whistling. Just follow the instructions. Try to follow the bouncing ball type thing. Do it with a lot of energy. The better you do this, the better the chance we are going to put this in the movie. So with that, let's roll the tape.
[silence]
[audience saying something in unison]
[applause]
Joe: OK, I'm just going to now direct you directly. So we are going to try to set a Guinness Book world record here of most people directed at once. So what I need you to do is just give me the biggest cheer you can as soon as I lift my hands up, OK ? And when I bring them down, I want you to go silent. Ready...
[crowd cheers]
[silence]
[crowd cheers]
[silence]
Joe: How would you guys like to see the new TRON trailer?
[crowd cheers]
Joe: We're not going to show it to you.
[laughter]
Patton: We actually do have a TRON trailer, but first...By the way, anyone outside of this hall right now is terrified.
[laughter]
Patton: "Is there some kind of rally going on? What's happening?" So we're going to take a few questions from the audience first, and then we are going to show you the brand new TRON trailer. There we go. First question right there.Audience Question: Hi. Why did you decide to use Daft Punk to create the music for TRON, and why do you think the music style fits in?Joe Kosinski: If you just look at those guys, it actually seems like a pretty good fit. They are huge TRON fans. Right before we had even started doing that V effects test, I had heard that they were interested. So we met...I think I talked about this last year. Sean and I met them for pancakes, which is odd.
[laughter]
Jeff Bridges: The disc theme. You had to be consistent with the disc theme.Joe Kosinski: Yeah, pancakes is all they eat. Yeah, exactly. And they are really serious about...You know, obviously TRON is a huge influence artistically for them. And we've been working on the music for almost...It kind of feels like it's almost been three years now. And it's something really new for your Daft Punk fans out there. This is going to be something completely new and different...
[applause]
Joe Kosinski: It's a mix of orchestral music, electronic, granular sounds. It's all blended together. You heard a little bit of it there. I think you are going to be really psyched to check out what they are doing.Patton: Cool. All right. Next question.Audience Question: Hi. My question is for Mr. Bridges. Explain the father and son relationship between Sam and Kevin.Jeff Bridges: Well, you know, questions like that are kind of tough for me in things like this, because I don't want to deprive the audience of any kind of surprises. I'm a big movie fan and I like to know as little about the movie as I can.
[applause]
Jeff Bridges: But it's a father and son relationship.
[laughter]
I don't want to blow the dynamic of what's going on in the movie. So I will just kind of leave it mysterious if that's all right.
[applause]
Patton: From the Steam Punk gentlemen in the front. Yes?Audience Question: When you first created TRON...this is towards the creator. When you first created TRON, you knew it was great. Obviously, it's amazing. But did you expect it to be so popular and amazing, creating such crowds like this? Did you really expect that? What's your reaction to that?Steven Lisberger: What's happened is that the generation that grew up with TRON has accepted it as a sort of founding myth of the Internet, of the technology that is theirs. I always thought that it had a validity that went beyond suburbia's ability to deal with it at the time, and that proved to be true.
So the story came true. And very often, I would look at what was happening in the world and I would say to myself, "This is just like the movie we made." And then I'd have to add "so long ago". And as all those truths piled up, eventually the next generation said, "This is what we're about. This is what we want." And I want to thank all the fans for holding on all these years.
[applause]
Jeff Bridges: I'd like to add just a little bit to that question. One of the things that attracted me to this next episode of the TRON saga is this mythology; I look at it as a modern myth. And we need modern myths that are kind of up to date. I was at a concert, Jackson Brown, just last night. He's my buddy. I don't know if any of you guys were at that concert. But he was telling me about what these things do. That, you know, 20 years ago, what a wonderful idea. We'll have these little plastic water bottles, and whenever we need a drink of water, we get to gratify that urge.
But now we're finding out that these things, even though they say they're biodegradable, they really aren't, and they don't go away. One of the themes of our movie is about the dark side of technology, and it happens...it's happening so fast, our technology, that we haven't developed any ethics to go along with it or any real knowledge about the long-term aspects of our technology.
So, I want to encourage the fans out there to go to a website and learn about this. It's called The Pollution Coalition, and it's about getting rid of these things. I know they're convenient, but they're no good. They're [laughs] no good for us.
[cheers and applause]
Patton: Next question.Audience Question: This one's for Bruce. I've met you a few times at [xx 31:13], if you remember those, and you talked a lot about Babylon 5, and how wonderful it was to work for. How did that, or did that prep you for this type of a movie?Bruce Boxleitner: Well, actually it was the other way around. I did TRON in 1981, it came out in '82. Babylon 5 was not until, like, '94, I joined it. So, I did have some experience with working in the science fiction realm through that. I mean, when we did the original TRON, we were in a black soundstage. Am I right, fellas? White outfits. We had to imagine...thank god Steven had the scene sort of storyboarded, so we could have a visual idea of where we were, because it was all just solid black...Steven Lisberger: It was a different time. There was so much idealism in the air, and we really got to dream big.Bruce: Yeah.
Steven: We didn't have to worry about the implications, or making it real. And Joe's made it all real. This is the next generation that has to live with this technology every day, and that's reflected in how different this TRON is from the first TRON.
Jeff Bridges: When we shot the first one, Steve, that was his first movie, and I...to this day I don't know if it was his innocence, or his great creative cajones, or his brilliance, or whatever, but Steve made the choice to line the walls of the set with video games that we could play for free!
[laughter]
Jeff: So, you can imagine [laughs] how difficult it was to get people to go to work.
[laughter]
Jeff: I had an ongoing battle with Steve on a game called, "Battlezone." Do any of you guys remember that? That was basically the world of TRON, so they would ask me to get off the game, and I said, "I'm preparing, damn it!"
[laughter]
Steve: That problem is worldwide now.Jeff: Yeah [laughs].Patton: OK, thank you. Next question.Audience Question: Yes, hi. My question is aimed at Jeff. 27 years later when you got the call, did you think, "Oh, no, not another roommate," or were you really psyched?Jeff: Well, I was attracted to this one for pretty much the same reason as the first one, that it kind of appealed to the kid in me. Here's an assignment to be sucked inside a computer, and you get to work with all these cool guys, and there are going to be great costumes that you get to wear, and use all the most up-to-date technology. So, that's really what brought me to this party, as well as the idea of creating this modern myth, which I think we need to do to kind of update our older ones and give us a new one.Patton: All right. Next question. Ooh, twins. Nice.Audience Question: This question is for Olivia Wilde. Now that you've starred in a film that deals with video games, do you have a new-found appreciation for guys who play video games?
[laughter]
Olivia Wilde: Oh, absolutely. It's such a complex world, and now I'm so fascinated by it as I've been able to learn more about the history of video games and what we're capable of doing now. I just started playing them. I can't believe it. The last video game I played was "Duck Hunt." Things have changed!
[laughter]
Olivia: And so, no, I'm completely fascinated by them, and that's why I'm so happy to be here, because these are my favorite types of fans. You guys are discerning, and you're smart, and you know this world a lot better than I do, and I'm just really honored to be a part of this.
[applause]
Michael Sheen: Well, Steve gave the original cast of TRON Battlezone and all those different games. Joe just gave us Yahtzee.
[laughter]
Patton: Well, someone just got two new Twitter followers, that's all I'm saying. Next question.Audience Question: Mr. Bridges, we're all big fans, and congratulations on your recent Oscar.
[cheers and applause]
Audience Question: Can you share how your creative process has changed as an artist from 27 years ago to now?Jeff Bridges: It hasn't changed all that much.
[laughter]
Jeff: No, really, I'm from an acting family. My father, Lloyd Bridges...
[cheers and applause]
Jeff: He was very gung-ho to have all his kids go into show biz. He valued it so much. As a matter a fact, I just did an interview, and somebody put a comic book on the table in front of me, and it was my father as Mike Nelson, the comic book... "Sea Hunt." And I looked at that, and he had this wet suit on, and it looked like a prototype for a TRON suit.
That child thing I was talking about, that excitement that a child has when your friend calls you up and says, "Come on, we're going to play this game!" You want to get dressed up, and I've got all this neat gear," and it's exciting. That's just never gone away for me, the playfulness of acting. Even if you're playing a dramatic role like in "Crazy Heart," the chance to pretend like that, to get into somebody else's skin, just like when you were a kid, is very much the way I approached it then, back in those days.
[applause]
Patton: All right. Next question.Audience Question: Hi. My question is for everybody, basically. I was wondering at the beginning, when the movie was in production, when it was called "TRON 2.0" or TRON with a two in there, how did it evolve into "TRON: Legacy?"Sean Bailey: We thought, because it was a father/son story at its core and a legacy of Kevin Flynn passed on to his son, Sam, we thought it was a creatively appropriate title. But the other reason we were really...when we landed on Legacy, we really wanted to go that direction is, I also think that Steve and Jeff, Bruce and team set a standard in 1982 of how they were pushing the envelope.
And so we felt as this team a creative legacy as well for wherever we could be pushing the boundaries on this movie, we wanted to. And so it both kind of fit our movie creatively, and also we thought really spoke philosophically to the movie we were trying to make following up these guys' achievement in 1982.
Patton: Wow. Next question.Audience Question: Are they going to re-release TRON 1, and if they do, will it be converted to 3D like Toy Story?Sean Bailey: We're having all those conversations right now. I think you can expect to see the original TRON in some pretty exciting formats hopefully pretty soon.
[cheers and applause]
Patton: And the mini Unabomber.
[laughter]
Audience Question: My question's for Jeff Bridges. What's your opinion on the remake of TRON?Jeff: I have a great opinion on the...
[laughter]
Jeff: ...remake of TRON. It's not really a remake. You know, one of the cool things that I think that Joe and Eddie and Adam did very well is to make it not only a sequel – it will work for people who saw the old TRON, – but it also stands on its own. You won't have to have seen the first one to make this one make sense. Have you seen the first one?
[laughter]
Audience Question: No.
[laughter]
Jeff: It doesn't matter. You can see it after this new one. It might be more interesting that way.
[laughter]
Patton: It's available on VHS and laserdisc.
[laughter]
Patton: So, OK. I believe that is for the questions.